


The Clayton Family Plant Hospital

by RosieTarnation



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-12
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:21:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27519061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RosieTarnation/pseuds/RosieTarnation
Summary: The proposal wasn't the first or last time Dani brought home a plant for Jamie to rescue.  Jamie catches on that maybe Dani's scared of more than just the plants fading away.Or, several times Dani brings home plants for Jamie to save and one time Jamie leaves plants for Dani to care for.
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie
Comments: 16
Kudos: 151





	The Clayton Family Plant Hospital

It all began so innocently. Dani liked to wander the town sometimes – it started as a way to get acquainted with the place but over time, as the feeling of peace set in and it started to feel like home, it became a habit she looked forward to. She wandered through those familiar streets and waved at the postal carrier, chatted with the old man on the corner, and joked with the barista when she stopped in to get the same order every evening (hot tea for Jamie made by someone who knew what they were doing, and an iced tea for Dani because she didn’t want Jamie to have to drink her tea alone).

And then one day, one normal day, Dani is walking home with her teas in tow when she saw a small little half-dead houseplant on the curb. It’s garbage night, and she knew that in a few hours, the plant would be swept away to wherever dead things go next.

She picked it up, quickly managing a way to hold the two teas in one hand and the plant in the other.

She came home to Jamie yet again attempting to cook. This was something of a deal of theirs – Dani would go get teas and Jamie would do the cooking. 

“Did you find that in our shop?!” Jamie asked, incredulous, as soon as she saw the mess of green and brown in her girlfriend’s arms.

“Oh, no, someone left it on the curb,” Dani said. 

“Jesus, you scared me, Poppins,” Jamie said. “I thought for sure there was no way a plant got this unwell under our watch.”

Dani smiled a bit. She helped with the shop sure, but Jamie did all the real growing and caretaking.

“Can you fix it up, do you think?”

Jamie stopped her work on the counter, putting the utensils down and crossing over to Dani to take the plant from her. She gave it a good look over.

“Yeah, I reckon so,” Jamie decided. She picked through it a bit, trying to get a quick look of how bad the root situation was. “Yeah, she probably just needs a bit of love, is all.”

Dani smiled a bit and kissed Jamie’s cheek. “Thank you.”

“You alright?” Jamie asked, seeing something…something _sad_ in Dani’s eyes.

“Yeah,” Dani said, smiling a bit wider and shaking her head. “It’s heavier than it looks.”

“Oh, come on, then, you’ve been hauling plants around here for, what, a year and a half?” Jamie asked, turning her attention back to the plant. “You’ve got to have those gardener muscles in you by now!”

Dani laughed to herself, shaking her head. “If you say so…”

**\--**

A few weeks later, a couple down the hall was moving out. They left a bunch of stuff by the mail room with a sign saying “free”, so how could Dani not pick a few things up?

“Thank you so much, love,” Jamie said, looking through the small pile of books Dani picked up. “Oh, I’ve been trying to get my hands on this one! I just called the library yesterday; the hold list was still three people long!”

“Yeah, I remember you mentioned this one. What a coincidence they were giving it away.”

“Thank you for getting it,” Jamie said. “I remember Jen said they were going to leave stuff out today and I totally forgot about it.”

“Which brings me to…” Dani said, gesturing toward the cactus she picked up. “Turns out, they can’t fly with a cactus and they were giving it away…”

“Believe it or not, I’ve never grown a cactus before,” Jamie said. “They aren’t a lot of tiny potted succulents in grand estate landscaping, you know? Or in prison, for that matter.”

“First time for everything, eh?”

Jamie nodded in agreement. She was actually excited by the prospect of working with a new type of plant; they were growing in popularity and they were thinking about adding them to the inventory in the store.

**\--**

Dani woke up with a scream. 

And Jamie woke with a jump into action.

“It’s okay,” she said gently, sitting up and turning on the light in one swift motion, all while still gently putting a hand on Dani’s shoulder to ground her. “It’s okay, it’s alright, love.”

Dani breathed deeply, trying to calm herself down, nodding. Jamie was the only thing that could ground her but even then, it could take some time.

“Another dream?” Jamie asked, though she knew the answer.

Dani nodded. She inhaled shakily, taking deeper breaths now but also nearly crying.

“It’s okay, baby, it’s alright,” Jamie said again, putting an arm around Dani and letting her lean entirely on her. She held Dani’s hand with her own other one and kissed it. “Take your time.”

Dani had been getting dreams from Viola. Or, they were of Viola’s life and they were her dreams, her memories. Dani wasn’t really sure how it worked, but what she did know was so much more about the curse she signed herself up for.

She knew the tragedy of Viola Lloyd and her sister Perdita and their manor. She knew bits of how Viola spent her years as the Lady in the Lake, and this dream this night was more of that – another memory of the Lady in the Lake.

“She’s so angry,” Dani confessed quietly, just above a whisper. She’d known this for a while, she’d felt it on the fringes of herself as the Lady possessed her. But the Lady could only really let it show like this in her dreams. “I don’t want to be that angry that…full of rage. It’s uncontrollable.”

“But you’re controlling it, Dani,” Jamie said. “You’re winning.”

“I won’t win forever,” she said. 

“One day at a time, hey?” Jamie said. “One day at a time. This, tonight, it’s…bad. But tomorrow will be better, okay?”

“No one remembers her,” Dani confessed. That’s what she learned tonight, the explanation Viola gave her for her facelessness. “That’s why she looks how she does, because they forgot about her.”

“Who forgot about her?” Jamie asked gently.

“Her family,” Dani said, voice still shaky. “Her husband, her daughter. Everyone who worked with her, everyone she ever knew. She just…there was nothing left, once she was forgotten.”

“Dani Clayton, I promise, no one is going to forget you-.”

Dani cut her off, not even remotely ready for that. She was so caught in feeling Viola’s pain and Viola’s tragedy that she couldn’t even begin to process it for herself. She couldn’t even identify that _this_ was the terror she was feeling, the terror that after all of this, there would still be nothing of her left.

“It’s just…” Dani tried. She really, really didn’t want to talk about it. She didn’t know what else to say, though.

“Okay,” Jamie repeated. If Dani couldn’t speak, Jamie would. If Dani couldn’t take the silence, Jamie would fill it. “It’s okay, Dani, it’s alright. I’ve got you, it’s just her dream. It’s not you.”

Dani nodded, curling up against Jamie’s chest, crying as she felt Jamie’s arms tighten around her and Jamie kiss her head.

And as usual, as long as Jamie stayed with her, she did eventually fall back asleep.

And the next morning, she got up and carried on as usual, showing no trace of anything wrong but the slight bags under her eyes.

That afternoon, she went on another one of her walks and came back with another plant.

“Dani, we don’t have room for another plant,” Jamie said, amused.

“I know,” Dani said, tone instantly way more serious than Jamie’s. It made Jamie’s blood run colder. “I just…people are leaving these plants out there to die and if we can save them, we should! They shouldn’t be left there to fade away until they’re gone.”

Jamie usually prided herself on knowing what to say. She was an excellent reader of moods and situations and she was a proud student of Dani Clayton. 

But, after their years together, she had no idea what to do with that. She was sad, she was scared, she was…without a next step or a plan.

So she stood there, looking utterly at a loss for words.

Which only kicked up Dani’s “keep talking until it’s over” reflex. She’d never seen Jamie speechless like this and it set off alarm bells in her head.

“I just mean, you always fix everything,” Dani stammered.

Jamie’s jaw clenched hard at that. She could name a few things she couldn’t fix, and one thing for sure she knew she never would no matter how desperately she wanted to.

“I mean, you make everything better,” Dani tried again. “You do! You make everything better.”

Jamie inhaled deeply. “Alright, so, we’re not talking about the plants anymore.” Addressing it plainly was one way to get this conversation started.

Dani cocked her head a bit, agreeing. “Yeah.”

Jamie sat on the couch and Dani joined her.

“I think, sometimes, something that gets lost in all this is how many people you saved,” Jamie began gently. “You saved Flora. You freed Hannah and Rebecca and all those other souls there and they’re free now! They can finally rest, there’s no more fading.”

Dani nodded along, hearing it. It did help a bit, knowing that her sacrifice did have meaning.

“And…” Jamie took a breath, working up to the next part because she didn’t want to have to say and she knew Dani didn’t want to have to hear it. “I don’t know what’s going to happen to you. And I’m so sorry about that, I wish I did. I wish I could do more but I just…I don’t know. But I’m betting this Viola character doesn’t know either.”

One thing Jamie had never done in her life before that point was lie to Dani.

“I promise you, Dani,” she continued. “You will never fade.”

She told herself for the rest of her days that saying something that she couldn’t verify wasn’t a lie, exactly. That she still never lied to Dani, that no matter what happened, how this all ended, she would never forget Dani. But she knew, at the end of the day, she would never know if she wouldn’t fade.

“Do you think there’s a way out of this?” Dani asked, voice low. “Because I don’t, Jamie.”

Jamie shook her head, feeling the tears well even more in her eyes. “No, love. I don’t.” She took her hands and kissed them. “I’m so sorry.”

**\--**

Somehow, that acceptance was something Dani really needed. She soon found herself at a jewelry store, clutching a ring she took from Jamie’s dresser and having a very specific plan in mind.

**\--**

The plant rescues didn’t end after the proposal. They slowed down to a more manageable level, and that one plant with the ring in its roots got a prime location in the apartment. 

It still was quite the chore taking care of them all.

Jamie laughed watching Dani refill the watering can one afternoon. “What?” she asked.

Jamie looked around. “We should change the number on the door to ‘The Clayton Family Plant Hospital.’”

“What?”

“Dani, we’ve had more plants coming through here than I can count.”

“No, not that,” Dani said. She was grinning. “Are we the Clayton family?”

Jamie blushed, just a bit. They didn’t really talk about this – legal name changes seemed more trouble than they were worth at this point, and also firmly in the “we would always know” category. Jamie didn’t need her driver’s license to say “Clayton” to be Dani’s family.

“Oh,” she said. “I mean, I hope so. It’s better than my name.”

“Is it?”

“It’s your name,” Jamie said, trying to keep it cool. “That’s the deal, isn’t it? I take your ring, I take your name, so on so forth.”

Dani was full on smirking now. She _loved_ how badly Jamie wanted her name. 

“Okay,” Dani agreed. She put the can down. “Do you know what, I think these plants will be okay without water for a little while longer,” she said as she crept up behind Jamie and wrapped her arms around her waist. She kissed the back of her neck.

“Yeah, I think you’re probably right,” Jamie murmured through a grin, turning to kiss her wife properly.

**\--**

Jamie wasn’t sure how long she sat on the edge of the lake for. She’d gotten what she came for, she saw Dani, her Dani. She had begged to be taken and she was refused. She knew in that moment that Dani would never take her, or anyone else. She knew there was nothing else for her to do there.

She didn’t want to remember Dani like this. She knew she wouldn’t, that she’d fight it, that she’d remember the good times and the real Dani and everything they worked for and shared.

But she dreaded leaving. She dreaded leaving Bly and coming home to an apartment with no Dani, just her rescue plants she worked so hard to save.

Suddenly, she stood. She marched to the greenhouse and the garden and gathered all the tools she needed and set about her work.

She’d spent years of her life making sure the gardens of Bly looked just so, and even after it had been abandoned for years her work was so good that many of the plants were still alive, even if just barely.

She carefully and skillfully uprooted plants she knew Dani loved, plants she knew Dani would want around.

She moved them to the water’s edge and gently replanted them on the banks of the lake. Jamie knew exactly what plants would thrive there, what plants could survive being near the water’s edge.

Her final gift to Dani was one very carefully extracted moonflower, planted in a carefully selected plot right at the water’s edge. 

Jamie knew Dani would keep them watered there. She wouldn’t let them fade.

**Author's Note:**

> Abandoned subplot for this that I couldn't work in included that Jamie insists on cooking because she needs to prove to herself she can take care of people! Because of the cooking incident with her brother when they were kids! That just occurred to me while writing this but I couldn't work it in and it makes me feel things so I thought I'd share.
> 
> Also, and again most importantly, fuck trump, white supremacy, and fascism.


End file.
